What is Ayurveda?

Originating in India, Ayurveda is a 5,000-year-old system of natural healing and is the sister science of yoga. Known as the ‘science of life’ (Ayur = life, Veda = science or knowledge), its principles provide guidelines to help us stay healthy while realizing our full human potential. Based upon the tenets of nature and each individual’s unique constitution, Ayurveda offers ideal daily and seasonal routines, diet, behavior and sensory recommendations. This holistic system reminds us that health is the balanced and dynamic integration between our environment, body, mind, and spirit.

In our modern western society, most of us think of medicine when we get sick or injured and that’s when we seek treatment. The treatment we get is usually addressing the symptoms and not the root cause of the dis-ease and often treats through invasive therapies such as drugs or surgery which may have undesired side effects. While Western medicine is highly developed and has an important place in our health care, there is need to look deeper at the causes of our dis-ease and how to prevent ourselves from getting sick in the first place.

Ayurveda as a holistic system of health works mainly at prevention of diseases, teaching us how to live a balanced life, how to eat well and how to live best according to our constitution (dosha) in the environment we are living.

When someone is already sick, Ayurveda recommends a system of purification with natural ingredients and therapies to collect the toxins that have accumulated in different parts of the body, and then expel them, purifying the body. Therapies together with the use of natural herbs, life style adjustments, correct nutrition and a conscious way of life will lead the patient back to a state of equilibrium, that is our natural state (prakruti) and as a result health and happiness will follow.